Category: Poetry

Two Litanies

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

A bustle
An adornment
A wanton extravagance
An expense
A lady or gent
An uptight bitch or ass
A westerner
An imperialist
A trader
An Orient Express route
A taste of the other
An embargo
A bum deal
An inequitable friendship
A revolt
An upended vessel
A sugar spill
An opportunity to dunk
A tea bag

Mount Vesuvius
The disaster
or purge
The brick
or tinder
The carnage
or refuse
The ripple
or footprint
The memory
or trauma
The foresight
or paranoia
The intervention
or arrest
The proposal
or prescription
The capsule

The First

.Reading time 2 minutes.

We finger-fucked in Latin class,
and got away with it
by playing make-believe.

You were a concert pianist,
plucking the Bumblebee
in my panties.

I was an airline pilot,
preparing your cockpit
for the ascension.

We wasted our ripest years
playing bride and groom,
feeding off each other’s

Daddy issues, and
sharing everything but
the wet dreams.

You dreamt of MKs and
premeditated revenge
on mustaches, bottlecaps,
and Camel packs.

I dreamt of reading banned
books beneath streetlamps,
and lapping lattes at 9pm.

We thumbed rides off I-89
and hurdled over state lines
to bod-mod joints
in Vermont,
where they’d ink a kid
without permission.

You marked your body
♥ ab imo pectore ♥
in my name.

I marked your words
and hoped to die, survived
by warm-hearted man.

We begged consent of our parents,
and mine named you Hamartia:
the downfall, the bad boy phase.

We begged consent of our parents,
and yours named me Femme Fatale:
the one who plants ideas

of education, insurrection,
and riding two-wheelers
without protection.

lovers are lunatics
who speak with tongues and teeth,
in a language of promises

too big to keep,
in a language of lies
they dare call poetry.

We turned eighteen
with the leaves, and
dropped our love in embers.

You enlisted your body
with one hand, and tied
the other for safekeeping.

I enlisted the help
of my better judgment
to find an exit worth making,

and made it.
ab imo pectore, ego contristo
for leaving you.

Ten Truths and a Lie

.Reading time 6 minutes.

1) My third grade teacher, Missus Kara-Jane Crosley, singled me out and was always cross with me.

“You hang upside down on the monkey bars, wearing denim jumpers crafted from old overalls. You speak in gibberish of counting stars, and stand your ground when I say ‘No, only boys come from Mars.’ You come in late after recess time, and fumble the words of every nursery rhyme. Kayla, there are two types of people in this world: you and everyone else.”

 My Body lies over the ocean

My Body lies over the sea

My Body lies over the ocean

Oh, bring back my Body to me . . .

 2)   A child of the seventies, my father grew up pining for a color television, which was a luxury his family of factory workers could not afford. When I was ten years old, he bought me a twelve-inch set for Christmas, and displayed it like a trophy on the shelf above my head. Watching re-runs of

Sex and the City made staying up past bedtime feel all the more rebellious. I wonder how the children of the seventies learned what their parts were for.

3)  I removed my thorn-torn stockings, patched the wound with gauze and sap, and descended the stairs with an announcement caught in my throat:

“Ma-ma, I am a maple. Ma-ma, I’ve been tapped. Peter popped my cherry behind the sugar shack.”

“Oh, that’s nice honey, how was track?”

4) A daily dose of progesterone kept the baby away, and Planned Parenthood let me have it without parental consent or co-pay.

On October 30, 2010, the day Drew and I became exclusive, he flushed my pills down the toilet, called me a junkie, and swore he would rather be alone than watch me poison my body with artificial hormones.

He said, “I want to wear a condom,”

and I said, “Thank God for that.”

“Charge them with your card; don’t worry,

I’ll spot you some cash.”

5) “Joanne, we’re gonna need a vomit pan in here,” crowed the nurse, as I gripped the stress ball in my palm so tightly that she half-expected to see juice and clotted pulp dripping from my wrist. I retracted my limbs to keep them from whipping in the wind. I was a tortoise. I was a gyromancer. For once, I was in control.

The results arrived three weeks later, sealed in a broad manilla envelope colored like mustard: straight negatives. I breathed sweet relief into my cupped hands, still shivering with anxious anticipation. That bastard cost me fifty dollars, eighty-three cents, and an immeasurable sum of pride.Always buckle up before you ride.

6)  Before I turned vegetarian, and cut out all white foods, my favorite meal was barbecue chicken quarters, tucked into a warm bed of instant mashed potatoes. Hungry Jack ate his legs whole, and so did I, from drumstick handle to upper-thigh.

It may be said that “you are what you eat,” but I grew neither bird’s legs nor bird feet, so I switched to a diet of nuts and seeds, to end world hunger and fight disease.

7)  I broke three years of fidelity to have sex with an ex, and it wasn’t even as hot as I thought it would be. We fucked four times — in the men’s room at South Station, against the front door of his apartment, on the kitchen counter tops and, once more, under the shower(for the sake of conserving water). We fell asleep on opposite ends of the couch, each cradling a paper cup half empty with Honey Nut Cheerios, like grown-ups engaged in a real grown-up affair. That night, I dreamt I was an animal, and woke up with a tail between my legs. Home wanted to know where I had been, “How was your weekend? Did you have fun?” I laid down three aces, and waited for him to call bullshit, but he never did. I am a good girl who does very bad things, but only when I know that I can get away with them.

8) “Ms. Kennett, I understand that you prefer to be called ‘Lucy,’ is that correct?”

The receptionist donned a puzzled expression, as the patient paused to puzzle over her question, separating its syllables into columns, scratching plus and equals signs into the cheap pressboard desktop.

“Ms. Kennett?”

That time, I nodded, but neither confirmed nor denied it.

 [to be continued]

 9)                                                                                 [to be determined]

 event related to exploration of sexuality

 10)                                                                               [to be determined]

event related to intimate partner violence

 11)   I want to feel the force of my wrath and swing, smashing all the delicate things, but I resist, and in resistance, find strength.

 Bring back, bring back

Bring back my Body to me

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

I found an object
in the street,
vaguely Vermont-shaped,
all bent and
blooming.

A Love Poem

.Reading time 1 minute.

Reading her poetry stirred me up:                                                                                                   eye of newt, wing of dove — whatever.                                                                                           It did not matter. I would have fallen                                                                                               in love all the same.                                                                                                                               Yet, modest, she remained.                                                                                                                 She said: “In your presence, I can never                                                                               remember what to do with my letters;                                                                                           I connect consonant to vowel and                                                                                           vowel to consonant, but what comes out                                                                                   is not a language that I can recognize.                                                                                       Emily colored in her lips                                                                                                       with pencil-crayons, but always kept                                                                                           inside the lines; she was a “sometimes red,                                                                         sometimes deep magenta” kind of girl.                                                                                   She wore collared dresses and thimbles                                                                                   on her thumbs, with flushed cheeks that                                                                            seemed to say: “I know more of hugging                                                                               and kissing than I care to admit.”                                                                                                In her embrace, I was enveloped with                                                                                        the strength of a nightcap (fit snugly to                                                                                  my crown) and could never remember                                                                                    what to do with my Body.